Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Browning M1917: America's World War One Heavy Machine Gun" video.

  1. The water cooled HMGs of the time had the advantage of weight. Like in contemporary factory tools, the mechanic was so overbuilt in respect to the work they had to do that there were really few things that could go wrong. They worked until there were bullets and water. The Hotchkiss' mechanic was as reliable, but it was air cooled, so it could overheat. But it was not all peaches and dandelions for water cooled MGs. The weight prevented them to be used as offensive weapons, and the exposed water jacket was a liability. A bullet, or a splinter, on it, and the MG became useless, because the barrel was too thin to resist to more than few dozen of rounds without water.
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  2. +canicheenrage What I meant is: "the water cooled HMGs of the time had the reliability advantage of weighting a lot". As said, they were overbuilt in respect to the work they had to do. The more you remove weight, the more is difficult to mantain the same reliability, because parts become more subject to external factors.
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  3. Mind that, for example, the Colt 1911 career in the Navy could have been as long as 5 entire years. In the 1918 Navy trials John D. Pedersen's Remington M53 was the clear winner, it was not adopted only because it couldn't compete price-wise with a model that was already mass produced. The M53 compared favourably with the 1911 in the 1920 Army trials too, but at that point there were too many 1911 around, and not enough reasons to replace them. Browning was surely a gifted designer, but he was not alone.
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